Grieving Mother Takes On Gunmakers

A Youth's Death On A Brooklyn Street Leads To A Suit That Could Shake Up The Entire Firearms Industry

March 25, 1996|By Mike Dorning, Tribune Staff Writer.

NEW YORK — The one picture Freddie Hamilton has left of her son is the only one she ever will have.

The lawsuit she has filed against the gun industry can no more change that than a judge can overrule the verdict of a 9mm bullet.

But Hamilton hopes the multimillion-dollar damage suit may change the way the gun industry does business.

Spurred by the 1993 shooting death of the 17-year-old, Hamilton and four other plaintiffs are seeking to hold the entire firearms industry liable for gun-related violence.

"They're producing some very, very lethal things, and they have some responsibility to make sure they don't get into the wrong hands," Hamilton, 52, said in a soft, deliberate voice as she sat on a couch in the Brooklyn rowhouse where she raised her son.

Hamilton's son, Njuzi Ray, was shot as he walked down a street only four blocks from his family's home. The gun never was recovered, and the maker of the weapon cannot be determined from the 9mm slug found inside Ray's body. Police arrested a suspect, who was tried and acquitted.

Hamilton's suit alleges that gunmakers are well aware that lax supervision of firearms dealers--not just thefts of weapons--allows guns to travel into the criminal black market and thereby onto the streets.

In one of several parallels with major class-action litigation against cigarette-makers, Hamilton's lawyers have recruited a former top firearms executive as a whistle-blower on industry practices. Also, in this case, the defendants maintain the issue is really political and not a matter for the courts to decide.

The 43 handgun manufacturers named in the suit maintain that their federally regulated industry follows a distribution system sanctioned by laws developed after extensive political debate.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn this month denied the manufacturers' motion to dismiss the case and ruled that it should proceed to trial.

Hamilton's case is unique in its bid to hold the industry collectively liable. But it is not the only suit relatives of gunshot victims have filed against manufacturers. Courts are considering several suits filed against manufacturers of assault weapons.

California courts are considering lawsuits against the maker of the assault pistol used in a 1993 massacre at a San Francisco law office. Another suit filed in California seeks damages from the manufacturer of the assault weapon an Arab extremist used in a 1994 drive-by shooting of Hasidic Jewish students on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Victims of the 1993 Long Island Railroad massacre filed suits in New York against the maker of the assault pistol that convicted gunman Colin Ferguson used, but two of the three suits have been dismissed.

Still, Hamilton's case, which targets the industry's distribution system, could stake out new legal ground.

"(This case) is of great potential significance. It is already shining the light of day into an industry that has been very secretive," said Dennis Henigan, director of the legal action project at the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence in Washington.

"Certainly, the emergence of a whistle-blower within the industry is of great significance," said Henigan, whose center is not handling Hamilton's lawsuit but represents plaintiffs in the San Francisco and Brooklyn Bridge suits.

The chief witness for the plaintiff in the Hamilton case is Robert Hass, a former senior vice president for marketing and sales at Smith & Wesson. He has taken on a role similar to that played by former tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand in tobacco litigation.

Hass has sworn in an affidavit that his former employer and the rest of the industry are "aware" of "the seepage of guns into the illicit market from multiple thousands of unsupervised federal firearms licensees."

"In spite of their knowledge, however, the industry's position has consistently been to take no independent action to insure responsible distribution practices," Hass said in the statement.

He declined through his wife to comment further.

Until the Brady bill federal gun control law took effect in 1994, a gun dealer could obtain a license for $30 with no positive proof of identity and no check to ensure a dealer was following state and local laws.

Before that legislation, 288,000 dealers were licensed, including many private collectors, and many dealers operating out of private residences or post office boxes.

Since the federal government raised the fee and began requiring that gun dealers be fingerprinted and local police chiefs notified of their license applications, the number of licensed gun dealers has dropped to 168,000, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The large number of gun dealers fostered "one of the most efficient black markets in firearms in history," said Bill Bridgewater, executive director of the National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers, a trade association that represents the 17,000 dealers who operate out of stores.